


The Rake's Bluff

by clarkeneedsbellamy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1943541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkeneedsbellamy/pseuds/clarkeneedsbellamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Finn lies, Octavia plots, Bellamy bluffs, and Clarke contracts a headache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rake's Bluff

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for the cheesiness of this title.

“I owe you.  Dearly.”

Casting a furtive glance around the ballroom, Miss Clarke Griffin curls her fingers around Miss Octavia Blake’s bronze wrist, and pulls her into the corner she’d carved out for herself among the mingling crowd.  They make a dance of brushing past the dark blue curtains of the Cartwigs’ ballroom, into relative cover from any searching eyes.

Namely, those of a Mr. Collins.

Octavia crosses her arms with a snort.  “As if I would let Finn Collins anywhere  _near_ you.  He’s lucky I haven’t struck him.”

Muscle memory should prompt Clarke’s voice towards a few sighed words of caution.  Octavia acts rashly, she exercises restraint, and thus has been the nature of their friendship for years.  She would likely have forced her tongue into the routine already had anger not burned its tip blank.  No, perhaps not blank.  There are a good many things she’d like to say of Mr. Collins, none of which rank in a particularly ‘restrained’ vein.  The closest she can come to habit is catching her tongue between her teeth.

“Maybe my brother could challenge him to a dual.  He’s around here somewhere…”

_That’s_ certainly enough to jerk Clarke back into old habits. “I don’t think—” She flushes at the sight of a smirk pulling at her friend’s rouged lips.  “Right. You’re teasing.”

The smirk stretches at her mouth until it’s not quite upturned or downturned, but set at a — somewhat bloodthirsty — medium. “Although I’d rather see you point a sword at him.”

Clarke chokes on a laugh.  “You read too many novels.”  (She doesn’t offer further protest.)

The jonquil folds of Octavia’s dress seem to burn an extra pound of obstinacy into her twined arms.  “And you’ve been hiding all night because of the cad.  He deserves to be stabbed, and you deserve to be dancing.”  Dark bun collapsing against the wall, a sigh stretches at her corset.  “I never realized how dull these balls were without you.”

She raises a dark blonde eyebrow.  “Without Mr. Jordan, you mean.”  Clarke knows full well that that her absence would likely pass less mourned if business hadn’t stolen Octavia’s chief admirer – not to mention chief source of entertainment — away from London for the past fortnight.

Octavia raises her jaw, possibly for the sole purpose of tilting a glare down at her.  “Without my  _friends_.”

Fingers falling to soothe an imaginary wrinkle from her skirt, Clarke swallows a snort.  Octavia may have a stubborn streak the size of the Thames, but she’s hardly slow-witted enough to truly believe any of her followers set on mere friendship.

Besides, Clarke’s wits don’t lack for speed themselves.  If they did, she might not be so achingly aware of how often she’s shirked her duties as a friend lately for no better reason than the shape of Mr. Collins’s grin.  She does her best to shove the other reasons away into the hollows of her skull – his charm, for example, or the fact that he grew passionate over things like charity and art and politics.  Yet she’s met plenty of well-read gentlemen over the course of the Season.  Finn had respected that she could care for such things as well; that her opinions carried weight in fields other than stitching and society columns.

Or so she’d believed.  ‘Respect’ now seems a rather laughable term.  At the very least, it implies that he’d have informed her that he has a wife waiting in the country, rather than leaving her to hear the news exchanged among idle ballroom chatter — and her reputation to the whim of the  _ton_.  There may not have been anything terribly improper about their outings to the theatre or the art gallery, but there hadn’t been anything infrequent about them either.  A certain society column definitely hadn’t thought so, nor did its – week-old now – hinting that an engagement between the two must be forthcoming.

Apparently not.

With a short cough, Clarke straightens her posture.  “Well.  I don’t suppose I can hide here all night.”  Lead coils through her feet with each syllable.

“Exactly.”  A dark curl bounces against her cheek as she perks from her slump.  ”It’s his presence that should make for scandal.  You, hiding back here – it’s getting depressing.” Then, before Clarke can falter, Octavia pulls her back through the tapestry.

And straight into the trajectory of Finn Collins.

Slightly overgrown hair brushing past his forehead, he blinks a grin at the sight of her.  Clarke freezes, mouth too tense to frown and fingers too taut to uncurl from the skirt of her gown.  Octavia mutters a few words that she must have pilfered from her brother’s vocabulary.

A beat late, Clarke shakes the anchors from her feet and makes her way towards him.  “Mr. Collins.” 

His grin dips in near perfect synchrony with his brow.  Possibly at the ironed stiffness of her voice.  More probably at the mischief curling at Octavia’s lips.  Still, a smile continues to stretch at his mouth when he replies – or, more precisely, begins to reply.  Before he can say a word, Octavia’s slipper strikes and jostles her into a nearby table of tarts.  It’s only years of dance lessons that save her footing.

“What on earth are you—”

Octavia widens her eyes in a poor play at innocence.  Scarcely a second later, her heel conspires with her hip to shatter Clarke’s alignment once more.

And suddenly Finn’s isn’t the only chest that Clarke would like to see at sword point.  Toes tumbling against the hem of her gown, she topples into a mess of bumbling knees and sputtered breaths.  Leather gloves settle around her shoulders, a snickered breath brushes her ear, and mortification ripples tepid through her stomach.

“Easy there, princess.”

She wrenches herself from the steadying grip.  Not her most graceful counter, she’ll admit.  Yet still perhaps more graceful than publicly collapsing into a man’s arms.  Especially this man’s.

There are rakes, there are bucks, and then there is Bellamy Blake. 

She raises her own gloves to her skin to scrub the ghost of Bellamy’s fingers. 

He slants a nod and a grin over her shoulder.  “Take care, Octavia. Wouldn’t want Miss Griffin to fall and break her neck.”  

“Of course not.”  Clarke doesn’t need to turn around to know that Octavia has donned a wide smirk.  “How  _lucky_ that you were here.” 

_Sword point._   A most painful death by a most sharpened sword.

But, given the sheer impossibility – not to mention ridiculousness — of such recourse, Clarke settles for fighting an eye roll and pretending to miss the reply among the heavy murmur of the ballroom.

“I think a sprained ankle more probable.  But my…” her tongue curls against the back of her teeth, doing its best to buck speech away,  “Thanks, nevertheless.”  The manners grate at her mouth, a disorder only Mr. Blake has proven quite so capable of producing. 

“Mine as well.”  Irritation clenches her fingers tighter against her gown.  Finn’s voice doesn’t come nearly as close to her earlobe as Bellamy’s had, yet it rankles just as horribly.  Possibly more.  “I was hoping to ask a dance of Miss Griffin.” Everything about him, from his lopsided smile to his dark brown eyes, is just so achingly  _open_.  “And preferably both her feet.”  Finn’s stare probes for contact with hers.  She cants her head away.  Achingly and misleadingly open.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”  Bellamy’s tongue turns brisk just as hers goes slack.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Octavia shrug an utterly fake frown of apology at Mr. Collins’s suddenly creased brow.  “It seems my brother just asked for her next dance.”

She knows now, at least, what had kept Octavia for so long.  Her cheeks blaze at the thought of the story she must have spun to gain her brother’s cooperation, how pitiful she must have painted her plight.  Clarke barely refrains from dragging a silk-clad palm against her forehead.  (Laudanum. She’ll end the evening with a dose of laudanum.)

Bellamy’s arms, sporting a good deal more muscles than they’d possessed before he left for the navy, cross at his chest.  She’s known him long enough to read the gesture as a challenge, just as she knows him well enough to see the dare behind the minuscule shift of his brow.

“Yes,” she says finally.  “It seems I just promised the next set to Mr. Blake.”

Finn’s forehead furrows deeper, each line no doubt recalling every biting comment she’s made about Mr. Blake’s rather infamous exploits.  Respected officer, he may be.  Symbol of chastity, he is not.

But then, he doesn’t have to be.  The silk of her gloves wrinkles against the leather of his.  It’s women, as Mr. Collins has so kindly reminded her, who have to worry about stained reputations and the like.

And then Bellamy is smirking at her, and they’re walking away from Finn to take their places in the waltz.  Never mind that, putting aside the unfortunate evening she fell ill last month, Clarke has never felt less like flitting about a ballroom.  (It still makes for a rather close call.)

From a philandering fiancée to a self-proclaimed rake.  Wonderful.  And she’d believed her pick of dance partners incapable of deteriorating further. 

“Prince Charming not so charming after all?”  Whispered or not, each word chafes like a splinter. 

Clarke rolls his eyes, takes her place, and holds her reply for the few steps it takes the music to bring her to him once more.  “Oh, he’s certainly charming.”

His snort isn’t loud enough to draw any outside interest as to the contents of their conversation, but the strangled sound sends her gaze squirming about the room regardless.  “Brief tip, Miss Griffin.”  His voice mocks the edges of her name.  “Don’t try poker.”

_Rolling one’s eyes is in bad taste.  Rolling one’s eyes is in horribly bad taste.  Rolling one’s eyes at Bellamy Blake_ – she abandons the argument mid-sentence.  For all the ire he’s so proficient at drawing from her, Bellamy has been a figment in her life for years.  For as long as she’s nursed a friendship with his sister.  She’s rolled her eyes at him many times before, and she daresays she’ll do so again. 

But not tonight.

So, rather than gritting her teeth or sharpening her glare, Clarke lightens her steps and softens her eyes – a combination that tightens her partner’s features with amused suspicion.  (She aims to eliminate the former reaction utterly.)  “Charm,” she murmurs, “does not mean much.”

“Really.”

“You can be charming, I’m sure.”  If the frequent blushes his attentions attract are any indication, at least. Though that likely has as much to do with looks as it does manner.  For all that the Blake siblings are neither remarkably wealthy nor well-titled, they do boast a well-earned reputation for remarkable beauty. Following the women of the set, Clarke rotates before turning back to Bellamy with a tilted chin.  “So I’m inclined to say no.  Not much at all.”

Amusement continues to curl at the corners of his mouth.  “Charm is just another word for bluffing.”

“And?”

A shrug claims his shoulders as they rotate steps.  “Bluffing has its uses.”

Clarke’s brow furrows a tad deeper than fitting for ballroom chitchat; she’s not sure that’s quite right — it sounds like a bag of moonshine, really — but her tongue lacks the evidence to argue.

So they continue to dance, banter, and pretend as though Mr. Collins’s eyes don’t follow their every step.

* * *

For every ball she attends, Clarke grows a bit more tired of mingling, far more tired of pity, and worlds more tired of London.  The two dances’ reprieve Mr. Blake grants her each night, barbed wit and all, jolt through her mind like hot tea.

She grows to depend upon it.

Clarke tells herself it’s for that reason alone that her eyes begin to latch onto Bellamy’s form, even when he’s nowhere nearby.  Even when he’s leaning against some far wall or dancing with another blue-eyed blonde or striding out to the hall for fresh air.  Octavia doesn’t bother pointing out that his gaze has been targeting Clarke – her every laugh, her every dance, her every relished dessert – for at least a month longer.

* * *

Even when Mr. Collins finally leaves London for the country, his shadow keeps up faithful attendance to every possible event.

_“Poor dear,”_ she’s heard.  (Clarke never requested pity.)

_“Doesn’t speak much for her, does it?”_ she’s overheard. (Her reputation has never felt so fragile.)

_“Wonder who she’ll marry now,”_ she very much wishes she hadn’t overheard.  (The term ‘Marriage Mart’ has never seemed so cutting.)

Her father made sure she read and hunted and pursued whatever hobbies a son might have practiced, within good reason.  She imagines he would have saved her from this too if he could – the feeling that she’s somehow become prey for the vultures of society, all because she made an error in judgment without the gender requisite to excuse it.

_Who she’ll marry now._ The mere memory of the tittered words kneads goosebumps along the pale slope of her arm.  Eventually, the aftertaste of each poached conversation shatters from her mouth.   _Eventually_ just so happens to occur in Octavia’s presence.  Octavia’s presence, on that particular afternoon, just so happens to involve that of her brother.

Clarke remains too caught up in the present  _eventually_ to notice the stare Octavia points at Bellamy, the eyebrow he arches in return, and the new  _eventually_ they set in motion.

* * *

“We should marry.”

The next  _eventually_ comes a sennight later to shove the breath straight from Clarke’s throat.  “Excuse me?”

He’s pale, he’s tense, and his tongue has donned an infuriating level of dispassion.  “Octavia mentioned it.  I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”

_Don’t think it’s a bad idea._   “Fetch my smelling salts,” she deadpans. “I may swoon.”

Bellamy’s jaw ticks.  It keeps ticking as he moves closer to her, each step padded by an utterly logical and absurdly straight-faced supporting argument. “You’re not marrying Collins.  You’re tired of people wondering whom you are going to marry.  It makes more sense than most matches.”  His dark eyes latch onto hers with a nonplusing gravity.  “Unless you’re waiting for someone else.”

By the time he finishes, Clarke is near certain she can feel the weight of his breath against her skin. (Ridiculous, of course.  That would require far greater proximity than propriety allows.)

One step, and the curve of his boots would knock against her slippers.

Clarke does her best to swallow the crack in her voice before informing him that the transaction sounds fairly lopsided.  Bellamy rolls his eyes before informing her that he’ll get her dowry, half-decent conversation, a bride he already knows out of the deal.  “You can’t say it’s not logical.”

She could stomp on his too-close toes for using her own guiding principle against her.

 “You said charm was worthless.  I’m just following suit.”   

Her tongue darts out against her lips, fast proving them numb.  He means this and he’s waiting and he’s  _insane_.  But maybe she is too. 

* * *

Clarke insists on Gretna Green.  He didn’t pretend at a proposal, so she won’t play at planning a proper wedding.

He nods slowly, a short laugh spreading his lips wide.  If he were just a head lower, she reckons she’d feel their curve against her own.

* * *

 

They’re not married a week before his mouth  _does_ find hers.  They’re not married much longer before hers finds his.  

“Logical?”  The word sinks into a long-needed, long-put-off breath.

Bellamy’s teeth grind a grin against her collarbone.  “Maybe,” he rasps against her darkening skin, “I was bluffing.”


End file.
